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Dec 06 2018 
OPTIONS: Why is Instagram Shopping the latest EPIC THING?
Who doesn’t love shopping?
We all love getting new things. Clothes, stationery, gadgets; shopping of any kind makes us happy. And with the rise of digital platforms, you don’t even have to make that effort of getting up from the comfort of your couch to do the thing you love the most.
About 20 years back, the boom in digital shopping hit us. It started with the then lowkey eBay and Amazon, which transcended to inspire other players where today everyone has a ‘shop / store’ feature on their website. From e-commerce to m-commerce, we are all about ‘online shopping’ now!
We are now a generation who purchase our toothbrushes online if possible. (Yep, digitization is making us lazy, but well!) Yet if you think of it, who really has the patience to scroll through the website of every brand and everything we like.
This is where, one of our dear online best friend has stepped in to make us sing Hallelujah! In the last year, one of the most popular picture sharing portals, a.k.a. Instagram has made life easier for us.
Frankly, it should have done this ages back because with numbers like 25 million business having a page on Insta, with a total of 800 million users, it had to be the most EPIC one stop shop for all of us.
Let’s be honest here, we DO spend a LOT OF TIME on this app (a ridiculous amount of time maybe) and if we are getting information (I mean gossip) and shopping at the same place, IT DEFINITELY IS THE SEASON TO BE JOLLY!
via medium.comSomewhere at the start of this year, Instagram started to bless our lazy souls by giving us the feature that allowed product tagging. Product tagging, a little bit of the details and the price, all could be seen in one go and a few clicks later, it was time to wait for the delivery of the product.
WHY IS INSTA SHOPPING THE MOST EPIC THING YOU ASK?
Best of both worlds
via www.vate.org.au“Running late! No time!” is our mantra any day any way. Instagram has made life easier by making the app the grand-daddy of efficiency. So while doing the scroll, scroll, scroll, we could not just like what we saw, but also buy it! No remembering it, screen-shotting it or looking for it like a maniac.
Or WORSE, forgetting about that gorgeous kaftan you saw on some page you can’t remember! You can be busy judging your friend’s alcohol choice in one post and scroll down to buy that kaftan in the next.
NO MORE FOMO
via medium.comAs a business, your biggest fear is FOMO! Have you listed on enough sites, do the sites bring in enough traffic and many other such questions bog you down? All that can be easily tossed out because Instagram is a portal where FOMO doesn’t really exist. By designing your content and promoting it the correct way, you WILL get your kind of traffic, come what may!
Story to sell
via allevents.inWE LOVE NEW FEATURES ON INSTA! And with the latest one, you can shop through stories too! With 400 million users checking on stories everyday, Insta stories have its own market as well. Those few clicks of looking for that top which you saw on a brand’s BTS story are now saved!
Holiday season is round the corner. And with it, a lot of parties too! Perfect for business and for buyers. It’s time to go shopping, insta-style!
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Dec 01 2018 
Social Selling: Converting followers to customers
Thousands of followers, hundreds of likes, comments flooding in praising your work. Achievement unlocked!
But where are the sales?
As a brand, you’re left scratching your head. You mentally rewind. Content – tick. Content quality – tick. CTA (call-to-action) – tick. You did everything right but clearly something went wrong.
Keeping the frills part of content aside, the first focal point should be understanding the need of the customers. Creating a bond and keeping customers engaged in conversation, so when the customers want to buy, your brand is the first they recall (brand recall).
Once upon a time, long long ago, we operated on traditional sales model. And as traditional sales go, it included cold calling hundreds of prospects in a day, trying to find a lead. Creating a bond and engaging the customers wasn’t a part of the checklist.
But let’s be honest, in the current scenario no one really entertains these sales rep anymore. The world’s moved on to the digital platforms and that’s where the business lies.
But digital selling doesn’t mean you bombard people with unnecessary tweets, DMs and content. KEEP IN MIND: Don’t invade their space AND don’t spam!
Let your social selling talent take over. Now, what is social selling you ask?
via pardot.comSocial Selling is strategically getting in touch and interacting with people who are trying to find solutions for their problems. Problems that YOU can solve. It starts slowly with building and nurturing relationships. Trust is the KEY, the key which will make your clients believe that you can provide the solution.
Stats provided by LinkedIn say that social sellers attract 45% more opportunities than their peers, are 51% more likely to achieve quotas, and outsell their non-social counterparts 78% of the time.
Not bad numbers for what the traditional guys would call sales over chit-chat. Right?All this is well and good, but how do you sell without sounding salesy or without spamming?
1. Choose the right platform
First and foremost, be on the right platform and interact with the right audience. Find out where your prospective buyer is present and where your engagement/pitch will be taken seriously.
2. Be Present
via krome.sgI’d like to chat with a bot, said no one ever. Having chat bots liking and commenting on your behalf may sound like a good idea, but it does the opposite when it comes to sales. So be present, have a human interaction with the ones who are looking for you and your solutions. Get that personal touch in every engagement, that happens from your end on these platforms.
3. Be Consistent
via youtube.comJust like cold calling needs to be done on a regular basis, you need to be consistent with your digital efforts to drive that sale. For sales, follow up. Speak to them in-between. Don’t be all about that sales pitch and do the Houdini.
4. Offer Value: Simple but clickable – Keep this guru mantra.
via pinterest.coma. Details on call-to-action – short, straight, bold
b. Offer point to point detail
c. Provide relevant solution and share relevant information.5. Join existing conversations on your brand
via brand-taxi.comBrand advocates will defend you, market you, do everything for you and it works! But that is NOT ALL THAT WORKS. Step in and join the conversation. Can’t figure how to keep up with where the conversation is? Use social listening tools for that but step-in and step-up.
Just keep in mind, that out of all the digital world conversions, this conversion is the easiest to do! So it’s time to go all in with your digital efforts. Focus on building networks, connect with your followers and use it strategically to grow your business.
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Nov 27 2018 
Planning: Something that never goes as per plan
Life is what happens to us while we are making other plans. Relatable?
It’s that time of the year again when every person is planning for the next year.
Think about it, every person, every business has a vision. That vision is your starting point to make a plan. Whether business strategy or your next social media strat, you plan it all to the T. And then *kaboom*, it falls apart. Why?
1. Variables
via godsaidso.comNo one and NOTHING can prepare for the curveballs that you don’t know about. That’s what variables do to your plans. Your plan simply lacked contingency for the unexpected from the get-go.
2. Execution fail
via mycustomer.comNo plan is foolproof and you can’t foresee it failing till it’s in action. More so in social media strategies, as till the response doesn’t come in from putting your material out there, you almost cannot predict how it will be received by your target audience.
3. Client woes
“I changed my mind.” Damn! Now how do you tackle that? Briefs and strategies go into a tailspin when you combat these 4 words. They come in forms of ‘Let’s not do this, let’s do that.” or “We can also do that.” But in all cases, we need a new plan. NOW WHAT?
With every problem, comes a solution. You just gotta find it
1. Acceptance is the KEY
Don’t panic! Shit happens. Regroup internally, calm down and make your peace with it. Till it’s bothering you internally, your focus will be on the problem, not on the solution. And that’s helping no one in the room.
2. Make a new SHORT-TERM plan
Clearly the long ones are bound to break down. Business goals, life goals, where you see yourself in 5 years, all of it changes with time. And the short term strategies are no different. So even if you can’t plan it out ALL the way, plan it step by step. Make it easy for yourself and the people around you, be it your team or your clients.
3. Don’t lose sight of the GOAL
“I want to be THERE in 5 years.” How to reach it may change with time and variables, but your GOAL shouldn’t. As an agency, if sales are your goal, your strategy may change, but your end game is going to remain the same, so don’t lose sight.
Vision can’t change and it shouldn’t either, but plans can and will. So go with the flow, don’t panic and always have a few aces up your sleeve as back-up!!
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Nov 10 2018 
Analysing your social media funnel with the right metrics
Social media isn’t just about posting and throwing out information. It’s also about using the insights into your audience in the best possible way. All this is possible through social media analytics. (We spoke earlier about the numbers that matter to your business. But how do these numbers affect your social media funnel)
via bufferapp.com
Each platform has its own simplified analysis of your page such as Facebook insights, Instagram insights and so on. You can further opt for one of the several paid, analytical tools to get a more detailed report of your audience. But if you don’t know what to look at and what metric is important to you, then the whole point of the exercise goes to waste.
To get a better understanding of this, you in-turn try to figure out of where you are in your social sales funnel.
Every layer – awareness, consideration & conversion, has its own KPIs (key point indicators) that matter.
1) Awareness Stage
This is where you are trying to create your brand value or establish your market. At this stage, you are still new and your focus at the moment is to reach as many people as possible, giving them precise information through your social media channels.
The KPIs that matter during this stage are reach, impressions, shares, mentions, links, audience growth rate.
2) Consideration Stage
Now you have started building your audience. The next step to take is to engage your audience and keep them occupied through your content. Giving them solution-based content and calls-to-action is a pathway to opt for. With call-to-actions, customers who are now considering your brand will get that extra nudge towards reaching the ultimate step, conversion, to being a customer for your brand.
via www.ethos3.com
Metrics such as post likes, comments, shares, saved, average engagement rate, video views, lead rates work as your biggest indicators for the same.
3) Conversion Stage
With a social media funnel, you have successfully made an approach to achieve what you set out for. Your audience is not just committed to respond on the content you offer but has now become a customer to your brand.
via idunn.pro
Conversion rate, CTR (click-through rate), bounce rate, customer lifetime value, CPA (cost per action), CPM (cost per mille), CPC (cost per click) are the ever-so-important yardsticks that will signify the success rate of your strategies and campaigns and eventually your brand.
Module for your content can be flexible depending on the study of your metrics but taking this pathway will make it easier to turn an audience into loyal customers.
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Nov 06 2018 
Social Media Metrics: Numbers that matter
Picture this: You are a brand with an interactive Facebook page, Instagram profile, and an active Twitter account. But all of this isn’t translating into the business you’re looking for. How do you design a campaign to make the numbers, that are the most important, go higher? What are those hints you should be looking at, to strategize further?
Social Media Metrics
Metrics are details such as followers, reach, likes, views, retweets, shares, etc; these numbers are our data that helps gauge the impact our social media pages and campaigns have on the company and eventually, on our brand value and revenue.
via reportgarden.com
Social media metrics help us to divulge deeper in these everyday numbers, become high indicators of our business reach, impact and success as well as help us design our strategies and campaigns for the future.
What are the metrics we can use?
1. Reach & Impressions
While going through your social media profiles, you must have come across words like reach & impressions. Impressions tell you how many times have people come across your post on their timeline, organically. But it isn’t the strongest indicator as your post can be seen by the same account multiple times, and it still counts as a new impression each time. Reach is the index that tells you how many times a unique profile has come across your content. Together, reach & impressions play a crucial part in understanding the overall pattern as well as the quality of your content.
via squarespace.com
When starting a new business, reach metrics is the most important to you. Higher reach ensures that your content is viewed by a new set of people every day, which results in a growing audience.
2. Audience Growth:
Content consumption through the right audience is one of the initial focus of every social media profile. Not just any audience that checks on your profile once-in-a-while but an audience that is loyal and keeps returning to your profile regularly is what every brand looks for.
Keeping track of this metric helps you to understand at what stage or campaign have you received the highest audience and can repeat similar campaigns to continue growing.
3. Engagement Rate:
Engagement rate is influenced by the total likes, comments, and shares. The total engagement divided by your page audience gives you your engagement rate. Observing these figures, points to the number of the actual audience that is interested in your brand and has a higher potential to convert into a brand loyalist and ultimately, a customer.
Percentage – increase or decrease in your engagements can help you fine-tune your strategies and move ahead.
4. Conversion rate:
Every brand has a purpose, which is sales, and conversion rates are indices of how much of that traffic has converted into sales. Where bringing all the traffic, amidst battling changing algorithms is important, the most important factor for any brand is conversions. Conversion rate breaks down how much sales have been recorded against the traffic that has viewed & engaged with your profile.
via neilpatel.com
If your number is higher, means your audience is getting what they came for on your landing page. But lower conversion rate means you need to work on the landing page and also ensure that the right message is being provided beforehand.
5. Share of Voice:
Knowing your own metrics is great, but with thousands of brands competing in the same space, how do you know your brand position? With share of voice, you compare the number of mentions in correlation to your competitors. By knowing this number, you may adopt strategies that your competitor has used and create a bigger & better campaign.
Social media metrics are your step-by-step guide to making your brand successful. It also helps to plan your campaigns with the in-hand knowledge of data and make them more precise, keeping track of these tools and using them to your advantage will pose to be the slight difference in the massive success of your campaign.
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Oct 23 2018 
Social Media Calendar: Create a structured impact
Running a successful brand isn’t easy. Add to that, posting regularly on all your popular social media platforms? You are bound to miss out on posting some day or the other. Or keeping it till last minute, you wouldn’t know what to post and miss out on a particular time you favour.
How do you structure everything and make your life simpler? This is where a social media calendar comes to rescue.
What is a social media calendar?
A social media calendar is exactly as the name suggests. A calendar which helps you plan in advance for your posts; be it Facebook, Instagram or even Twitter. Details such as what to post, the correct hashtags, when to publish, all can be planned in advance.
Why use a social media calendar?
1. Post consistency
Social media is all about consistency. New, fresh content keeps your existing followers engaged and attracts new followers. Miss a moment and it may cost your brand big. As a brand, you will never have a “what do I post?” or “I missed my favoured time!” moment if you pre-plan all your content. You will be prepared for the coming few days or weeks, and posting will be a 2 minute job rather than a half-an-hour panic.
via www.onlinemarketinghq.co.uk
2. Perfect content mix
Maintaining an Instagram grid is not an easy task. Coming up with new set of hashtags customised day-wise becomes tedious. All these and more can be solved through pre-planning with a calendar. Make your content mix, the perfect mix – with posts on information of your brand, interactions with your followers (#AskMe) or even select posts/news from your industry.
via blog2social.com
3. Avoid cross-platform errors
Planning ahead and segregating posts as per platform helps you to avoid mistakes like using Instagram hashtags on Facebook, or last minute editing of captions to be Twitter ready. Another advantage is that with a calendar you can keep track of the correct handles to on the right platform instead of having to search last minute for the account or tagging a wrong account.
via buildmyplays.com
4. Content Planning
Careful and systematic planning = NEVER REPEAT YOUR POST (unless #throwback or #flashback). Having a clear outline of your week ahead, helps you to prepare content for the next few weeks. This also gives your graphic designer, copywriter enough time to devise something spectacular for you.
Curate your best work, create your best mix and put it all on (digital) paper, and YOU ARE GOOD TO GO!
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Oct 19 2018 
Social Media Adverts: Why does your business need it?
Gone are the days when brands would scoff at having social media promotions. We have successfully stepped into the age where each brand needs to have a strategy to promote itself through social media, thus leading the brand to reach its maximum potential possible. A specialist team, a plan of action and separate budgets, social media is slowly moving into playing a very important part from a marketing viewpoint.
Why? We as millennials have moved from ‘I will ask dad about it’ to ‘just Google it’. Over billions of users are reported monthly through social media portals. Searching for the latest thing to buy, to eat, to do, people today are using their smartphones for looking at options as well as using the devices for approaching the brand for purchase. We truly have become a generation that ‘look online’ to lead our lives.
via mrs.digital
That’s from the customer’s point of view. What about a brand’s perspective? How do you get noticed in this plethora of options, especially if people aren’t looking for you? How do you, as a brand, grab their attention saying, “Hey, if you’re looking for options, I exist!”
Advertisements or ‘ads’ are now available on social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and even YouTube, which generates not just viewership but also helps translate a good chunk of this viewership into an actual business.
So, What do these ‘paid promotions’ do for your business?
1. Information and broadcasting
You have billions of prospective customers and many thousands of competitors on the same portal, doing the same things as you are. How do people know you exist in this sea of brands?
The first step of turning a person into a prospective buyer is letting him know the existence and the details of your brand. Organically your audience will grow at a steady pace but by putting some money behind your posts, you can reach a wider audience in a short span, thus helping you attract more leads.
2. Affecting decision making
With thousands of brands competing for that attention everyday in every way, how do you tip the scale in your direction? With targeting the right audience with your ads, you can leave an impression in the mind of a buyer. Subconsciously they appreciate your effort and eventually what you are selling.
via intenseblog.com
Whether they see your ads on multiple platforms or multiple ads on a single platform, subconsciously, your brand identity gets stuck with your audience.
3. Higher returns with your budget
With traditional advertisements, there are more misses than hits. They cost you a bomb and the chances for it to result in leads are slim. There is no clear targeting, whereas with social media adverts, you can precisely set your audience, thus increasing your leads as well as you save on the lead cost.
via hookagency.com
4. Retargeting existing customers
A lot of times your customers might just add your products to the cart or view certain products but not make the purchase. Through social media retargeting, you can reach out to them again, get them to review the product(s) and help push the sale further.
via varstreetinc.com
With varied options available through multiple channels, your prospective customers can change decisions before you can blink your eye. So turn to social media advertisements to make you the last decision they make before they
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Jan 15 2018 
For an Instagram Story hotter than Celebs
Social media is a something we are all familiar with along with continuously being bombarded by it. It no longer just connects people across regions and backgrounds, it has also developed a life of its own now, is vital in today’s tech heavy society.
via GIPHY
With the advent of applications like Instagram, it is all about being seen for even the most mundane routine activities. Although Nobel winner Malala Yousafzai famously said, “What is interesting is the impact and power of social media. So, we must try to use social media in a good way”, it is now also being used just to update, with the positive purpose behind it not always crystal clear.via GIPHY
From what you eat to where you are and who you’re with, Instagram helps you show case it all. Be it the 24 hour story that you can post to the location tags for your pictures or even the innumerable filters that it has, Instagram has undoubtedly transformed the way we see and use social media. As of 2017, Instagram has about 800 million active viewers. It is seen as a great interactive and wide reaching platform to post pictures and gather the attention that you need and want. You could be a blogger, a baker, a makeup artist or even a regular person wanting to express yourself, Instagram suits us all. It has a niche for everyone making it very inclusive.via GIPHY
Any Instagrammer (as we like to call ourselves) would be aware of the basics involved in sharing stories on Instagram. However, there is so much more to it! There are secret tools on Instagram that could make your videos more innovative and appealing. Following stories on Snapchat, Instagram launched its Story feature in August of 2016 and since then it has exploded. Research has estimated that about 250 million Instagrammers have begun to share stories on Instagram.via GIPHY
As a result of these stories, people’s time spent on the app has consequently increased from 24 minutes to 32 minutes. As we all know, some stories stand out from the rest making us view them multiple times. What is the special thing that sets those apart? Many brands and celebrities know how to work their stories and gather the attention of the viewers. Though it isn’t that simple, there are a few hacks that you can use to make your Instagram stories stand out too.Here are some tips and tricks to help your Instagram story stand out:
1. Make use of stickers. Instagram releases new stickers almost every day so make sure you don’t miss them and use the appropriate ones to “jazz up” your content.
2. Increase the views that your story receives by allowing people to share them with others.
3. Use the pen option to add more dimension to your story.
4. Add a funky & appealing background colour to the picture in your story, making it more attractive.
5. Ensure that the text in your story is interesting & appealing to readers and ensure that you make the text look funkier.
6. Lastly, you could either add music to your story or mute your story, depending on what you fancy and what suits the storyline.
Voila! Here that’s about the secrets of making your story and Instagram sensation! Sounds pretty simple, doesn’t it? So then, why not use these simple tips and make your story stand out in the best way? -
Jul 11 2017 
6 Reasons Why Instagram Stories are Beating Snapchat Stories Left, Right & Centre
If you are a social media junkie and/or a social media professional, you probably have every possible social media app downloaded onto your phone. However, building a good social media strategy doesn’t mean being everywhere, it means being on the right platforms in the right manner. “Stories” seem to be a feature that every app is starting to adopt, from Facebook and WhatsApp to Instagram and Snapchat, however, if you are feeling you are spreading yourself too thin by being everywhere, you may just want to focus on Instagram stories. Here are six reasons why Instagram stories are, in fact, beating Snapchat stories –
1. More Number of Users
There are roughly 300 million daily users on Instagram and only 166 million daily users on Snapchat. And, Instagram stories itself have more than 200 million users per day. These numbers pretty much speak volumes. Instagram helps marketers reach a much wider audience than Snapchat possibly can, simply based on the number of users.
2. Easier to Search
It is a lot easier to stalk, umm, search, for people on Instagram. Snapchat’s search function makes it very difficult to find and follow someone compared to the very user-friendly Instagram. You need Snapchat IDs and/or scan codes to find people, whereas on Instagram, all you need is the person’s name and you even get suggested account recommendations regularly, based on your likes and comments. Pretty neat!
3. Tagging Along
Instagram allows to you to easily tag people – this enhances visibility and reach. And, you can also share external links in Instagram stories, which allows brands to add essential information, such as their website links, blog links and/or other social media profile links. This feature gives Instagram stories an extra edge in terms of usefulness when it comes to marketing outreach.
4. High Quality Videos
On Instagram, you can easily upload videos saved on your phone – this means you can upload high quality content you have curated! The last thing you want is for your brand to put out shabby, pixelated videos.
5. Better Analytics
Instagram provides more data about followers, website clicks, impressions, reach, engagement, demographics, etc. All of this information is very important for marketers to track.
6. Wider Influencer Platform
theAmplify’s CEO Justin Rezvani says, “on average, our influencer community is seeing a 28% higher open rate on Instagram than Snapchat.” If you are a marketer, we are sure this statement definitely got your attention. Because of the larger audience base Instagram has, influencers find it much more rewarding to use Instagram stories. Snapchat shows only a few influencers on their discover section, whereas Instagram’s explore section makes it much easier for influencers to reach more people through recommendations.
Let’s face it Instagram has really implemented the stories feature in a smart manner and it is very user (and marketer) friendly. Snapchat is better for its initial intended purpose – sending private images and videos. Although, Instagram’s new disappearing message and image feature might just make things even more dismal for Snapchat in that department, as well. We’ll have to wait and watch!
All Image Courtesy: giphy.com
Comment below to let us know your thoughts – do you prefer Instagram stories or Snapchat stories? Do you have a useful social media tip you’d like to share with us? Comment below and let us know!
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Jul 06 2017 
Beat Declining Organic SM Reach with These 7 Tips
Marketing through social media can be a real pain the in the ass. Organic reach is declining steadily, because Facebook has turned into a greedy monster. No one wants to purchase each and every single page like. And, boosting every single wall post sucks. Don’t you worry – here are seven tried and tested tips to help you beat declining organic reach on social media.
1. It’s All About Timing
Keep an eye out to monitor when your followers are most likely to engage with you content. This is the secret key to increasing organic reach and establishing a higher engagement rate for your brand. Brush up on your social media stalking skills.
2. Content is God
Your content better be interesting. In fact, it better be profound. Posting about relevant topics and current trends will ensure more likes, comments and followers. Also, please do not post incessantly to increase following, since it does the exact opposite of what you trying to achieve – it pisses and repels people.
3. Target
You can set target demographics, which will help zero in on the right audience for your content. Depending on your brand’s specifics, start narrowing down on your audience. Remember: Be selective. Be specific. Focus on quality.
4. Share the Limelight
Sharing really is caring. Stop being self-obsessed. Learn how to be social and likeable. Share information your audience will appreciate, even if it means entering into a tie-up with other social media rookies to cross-promote each other’s content; this will actually broaden your reach.
5. Get Personal
Make your brand more personal, because people pay more attention to posts that have a personal touch to it. Humans like to feel special, even on social media. Behind-the-scenes footage, poll questions and audience shout-outs are some examples of ways to engage your audience. Give your brand a human element.
6. Ask Others to Share
Sometimes, you need to be very, very direct – don’t be afraid to ask people to share their own experience, photos and/or expertise with you. It will actually garner more attention and shares. Why? People are more likely to share their own and/or a friend’s content, rather than an attention-hungry brand’s posts.
7. When in Doubt, Test it Out
Always try and experiment with different types of content in various formats to see what really works best. Don’t be complacent – keep trying. Social media doesn’t have a cookie-cutter formula. In fact, social media algorithms keep changing, and what once used to work might not work later on. So, stay on your toes like a ballerina!
All of this said and done, don’t fall into the trap of ONLY focusing on organic reach. A smart combination of paid acquisitions and organic reach is what will help drive the most traffic to your site and boost engagement within a shorter time-span. So, set aside a small budget for selective paid promotions, from time-to-time, to increase your reach even further.
All Image Courtesy: giphy.com
Do you have a useful social media tip you’d like to share with us? Comment below and let us know!
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